OBJECTIVE The Residency Review Committee (RRC) requirement that residents must achieve competency in psychodynamic psychotherapy has generated considerable deliberation. METHODS The authors debated this subject at the 2004 American Psychiatric Association (APA) meetings. RESULTS Arguments favoring current requirements emphasize the importance of psychodynamic psychotherapy for psychiatric t...

BACKGROUND Dose-effect relationship data suggest that short-term psychotherapy is insufficient for many patients with chronic distress or personality disorders (complex mental disorders). AIMS To examine the comparative efficacy of long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy (LTPP) in complex mental disorders. METHOD We conducted a meta-analysis of controlled trials of LTPP fulfilling the followi...

Psychodynamic concepts about borderline personality disorder are reviewed and the literature concerning psychotherapeutic treatment of this group is examined. The treatment contexts considered include: psychoanalysis and intensive (expressive) psychoanalytic psychotherapy, supportive psychotherapy, group psychotherapy, family therapy, in-patient treatment, the therapeutic community, cognitive-b...

The aim of this research was to examine the extent to which the use of research-specific procedures in psychodynamic psychotherapy impacts upon treatment effectiveness and which variables moderate this potential relationship. Effects of audio/video recording of sessions, use of treatment manuals, and checks of treatment fidelity were examined. A meta-analysis was conducted on randomized control...

In the middle of the 20th century, Hans Eysenck reviewed studies of psychotherapy, which consisted primarily of psychoanalytic, psychodynamic, and eclectic treatments, and concluded that psychotherapy (as opposed to behavior therapy) was not effective and was possibly harmful. In the inaugural article in Psychotherapy, Hans Strupp challenged Eysenck's conclusions and discussed how psychotherapy...

BACKGROUND The treatment recommendations for depressed patients by the American Psychiatric Association encourage a focus on the patient's preferences. The focus of this study was the preference of depressed inpatients for the type of psychotherapy. METHODS Twenty-nine subjects of both sexes who were hospitalized with a major depressive episode were interviewed at 5-day intervals with the sam...

BACKGROUND The course of self-reported symptoms during medium- versus long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy has rarely been documented for outpatient settings. This observational study describes routine practice of ambulatory treatment in Germany and explores self-reported symptoms of a broad patient sample undergoing one (medium-term) versus two years (long-term) of psychodynamic psychotherapy...

OBJECTIVES Somatoform disorder patients demonstrate a disturbance in the balance between internal and external information processing, with a decreased focus on external stimulus processing. We investigated brain activity of somatoform disorder patients, during the processing of rewarding external events, paying particular attention to the effects of inpatient multimodal psychodynamic psychothe...

OBJECTIVE Time-limited manualized dynamic psychotherapy was compared with community-delivered psychodynamic therapy for outpatients with personality disorders. METHOD In a stratified randomized clinical trial, 156 patients with any personality disorder diagnosis were randomly assigned either to 40 sessions of supportive-expressive psychotherapy (N=80) or to community-delivered psychodynamic t...

In writing about the group setting in treatment of patients with psychosis the author is drawing from his long clinical practice and his writings on the subject. He underlines the value of group-analytic concepts, formulated by S.H.Foulkes, as well as needed modifications when patients with psychosis are in question. Through clinical examples he will explain his experiences and discuss some spe...